During our "State of the Union" live stream on Thursday night, [artist id="1231235"]30 Seconds to Mars[/artist] spoke at length about their past (Jared Leto's Kurt Cobain fascination), their present (Friday's headlining slot at the Bamboozle Festival) and, of course, their future.

And when it came time to discuss that last point, they took the opportunity to break a bit of news: They'd chosen "Night of the Hunter" as the next single off This Is War. And yes, they're very happy about it. Because, ever since they released their album in late 2009, they've been battling to get the song heard.

"We never thought this would happen, but we think it's going to be our next single in the States. There's always a song that fans latch onto, that the real music-lovers and the listeners [latch onto]," 30STM frontman Jared Leto told MTV News. "And this is the one, early on ... when we asked, 'What do you think should be a single?' [fans] always mention this, but people didn't quite think that this was the one at the time — some of the people at the record company or at radio stations — but they've warmed up to it, and now it's really fun to have a song that's eclectic and different to be a single."

In short, it's the kind of song a band has to earn the right to release. And 30STM have certainly done that. So now, their favorite track — Leto said it "encapsulates everything about 30 Seconds to Mars that we are interested in, musically" — is set to be released to radio ... with an appropriately epic video, of course.

"I would love to make a video for 'Night of the Hunter,' because I think it's one of the most cinematic songs on the record; when we play it live onstage, it always evokes imagery to me," Leto said. "The song really grew from ... my brother and I were born in Louisiana, we had a single mom ... who, at the time, was a high school dropout living in the South, [so we] really didn't have very much in terms of materialistic things. And although we moved out of the South when we were kids — you know, we joke we kind of climbed out of the muddy banks of the Mississippi River with food stamps in one hand and our instruments in the other — our mother helped carve a new life for us. And I think that song has some spirit of the South in it; some kind of American Gothic feel."

Are you glad to hear there will be a video for "Night of the Hunter"? Tell us in the comments!